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Friday, January 19, 2018

Germany: Parliament creates anti-Semitism commissioner post

Lawmakers passed measures designed to tackle anti-Semitism in Germany. An anti-Semitism commissioner is a cornerstone of the proposal, but critics insist the newly created post will be ineffective.

Members of Germany's Bundestag passed a bill to implement tougher laws on anti-Semitism. Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) as well as the Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens and the Free Democrats voted in favor of creating a commissioner post to develop and implement a strategy to root out anti-Jewish sentiment and crime as part of a 17-point proposal. The far-right AfD party backed the proposal, with the Germany's Left party abstaining from the vote.

In it, the parties state that anti-Semitic crime could still mainly be attributed to the far right, but that migration from the Middle East and North Africa had exacerbated the problem.

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Petra Pau, the Bundestag's vice president and Left party lawmaker in Berlin, said in an interview with daily Berliner Zeitung. The proposal "could not do justice" to the problem, as it put the recent wave of migrants at the heart of the problem, she claimed.